


Defining the Relationship

by kjack89



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, Emetophobia, Fluff, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 05:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2570672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/kjack89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Enjolras and Grantaire pick literally the worst time to have the "what are we" conversation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defining the Relationship

**Author's Note:**

> I had a prompt for Grantaire being sick and someone coming to check on him, and while I really, _really_ wanted to make it angsty, I went the nauseatingly fluffy route instead. You're welcome.
> 
> Usual disclaimer applies like it always has and always will. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos!

“Go away,” Grantaire groaned, his voice echoing strangely, even through the heavy wood of both the bathroom door and the door to his apartment.

Enjolras sighed and rapped on the door again. “I’m not going to go away,” he called. “Not until I know that you’re alright.”

There was a long pause before Grantaire called weakly, “Enjolras?” Enjolras took that as a rhetorical question and patiently waited until Grantaire continued, “I figured it would be Bossuet who came after me. Or maybe Joly.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Enjolras asked, amused. “When you pulled your Linda Blair in the Exorcist bit at the Musain, Joly naturally assumed that you’ve contracted Ebola, and Bossuet is trying to talk him out of contacting the CDC to get you quarantined.”

Grantaire managed a small laugh, though it was followed far too closely by a sniffle. “Well, I may in fact be contagious.”

Enjolras frowned at the door. “So you didn’t just have too much to drink? Bahorel figured you probably had, but I’ve seen you in various stages of too much to drink, and I’ve never seen a performance like that, so I knew it had to be something at least slightly worse than over-indulgence.”

Grantaire coughed and retched and Enjolras winced, waiting for him to resurface, which he eventually did, though with a slightly hoarser voice. “So you had enough faith in me to think that I hadn’t just been drinking myself into a coma, huh? Coming from you, that’s practically an endorsement of temperance.”

“Very funny,” Enjolras said dryly. “I’d never accuse you of temperance.”

“Again, from you, that’s a compliment.”

Enjolras sighed and rested his head against the door. “Look, can I at least come into your apartment? I promise not to follow you into the bathroom if you don’t want me to, but at least I can sit down or something. Not that I’m complaining about hanging around in your sketchy-ass hallway, or anything.”

Grantaire hesitated. “Or, you know, you could just leave,” he said finally, sounding both hopeful and disappointed at once. “I mean, you don’t have to stay. If you don’t want.”

“And as I told you already, I’m not going anywhere until I’m sure you’re alright, and since you haven’t made a single pun or sexual innuendo since I got here, I’m not entirely convinced that you are, in fact, alright. So, can I _please_  come in?”

“Fine,” Grantaire sighed, and Enjolras opened Grantaire’s apartment door and slipped inside, closing it after him. He glanced around the small, crowded yet surprisingly tidy apartment before making a beeline for the closed bathroom door, which he knocked on lightly. “Yeah, I’m still in here,” Grantaire said, followed by a dull clunking sound as if he had just decided to rest his head against something porcelain. Like the toilet.

Enjolras slid down onto the ground, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his back against the door. “So what do you think’s caused this whole…stomach issue?” he asked conversationally. “Did you eat something bad, do you think, like food poisoning? Or are we talking more stomach flu here?”

Grantaire groaned. “Does it really matter if the outcome is the same?”

Enjolras ignored him. “Of course, if Combeferre were here, he’d tell us that the stomach flu is inaccurately named, since it has nothing to do with influenza, and that calling it that inspires people to attempt to treat it incorrectly.” He paused, looking vaguely horrified. “Man, I need to stop spending so much time around him.”

Groaning again, Grantaire muttered, “I bet if Combeferre were here, he wouldn’t talk so much.”

“Yeah. right. If Combeferre were here, he wouldn’t  _stop_  talking. And would probably be giving you the etymology of the term ‘stomach flu’ right about now.”

“As if you’re not somehow going to relate stomach flu to the suffering of mankind or something,” Grantaire shot back.

Enjolras made a scandalized noise. “Excuse me, are you saying I’m as annoying as Combeferre?”

Grantaire snorted. “You’d be lucky if you were  _only_  as annoying as Combeferre.” Enjolras laughed and leaned his head back against the door, and if the soft thud from the other side of the door was any indication, Grantaire did the same thing. “Why are you here?” he asked quietly.

Enjolras shrugged. “I was worried about you.”

“Yeah, but  _why_?”

Enjolras glanced at the door as if Grantaire could somehow see the look he was giving it. “Please,” he said, a little huffily. “I could give you a litany of reasons, most of which you’d tear apart and tell me were incorrect or stupid or whatever. Suffice it to say, you’re my friend, and I was worried, and if you don’t believe that, then—”

“No, I do,” Grantaire said quickly. “I do believe that, I just—”

He broke off, and Enjolras frowned, about to ask what was wrong when he heard rather clearly what had driven Grantaire away from the door and back to the toilet. “That’s it,” Enjolras said, a little grimly, and stood, opening the bathroom door and striding inside.

Grantaire looked up at him, thoroughly miserable from where he was curled in the fetal position in front of the toilet. “What are you doing?” he croaked, though he made no attempt to move. “Go away, you don’t want to see me like this.”

Enjolras gave him a look. “Of course I don’t  _want_  to see you like this, as I’d rather you weren’t sick, but I’m not going to go away just because you don’t look your best.”

Ordinarily, Grantaire would have taken that opportunity for a sarcastic, self-deprecating comment, but instead he just sniffled, and Enjolras sighed before settling down next to him and carefully pulling his head into his lap, stroking his dark, sweat-plastered curls gently. “You probably shouldn’t be in here,” Grantaire mumbled, though he pressed into Enjolras’s touch nonetheless. “If it’s stomach flu, you could catch it.”

“If it’s stomach flu, I probably already caught it when I made out with you before the meeting,” Enjolras reminded him, his hand stilling. Grantaire made a whining noise and Enjolras laughed, resuming his petting. “Which is why I’m a little surprised that you didn’t figure out why I was here already.”

Grantaire made a disparaging noise. “Please,” he huffed. “We’re hooking up. That doesn’t mean that you’re suddenly the kind of guy who’s going to want to hold my hand in public or go on dates, or—”

“Or come check up on you when you’re sick,” Enjolras finished, realization clear in his tone. “Oh.” He glanced down at Grantaire. “Do you…do you  _want_ me to do those things?”

Grantaire shrugged and burrowed further into Enjolras’s lap. “Well, you’re already doing the whole checking up on me when sick thing. And it isn’t terrible.”

Enjolras laughed lightly. “Glad to know it isn’t terrible.”

Grantaire ignored him. “But I guess for the rest of it, it would depend on what we were, you know, doing here.” Enjolras glanced down at him, confused, and Grantaire sighed. “You know, like…” He winced before saying in a pained voice, “Like ‘defining the relationship’.”

“Oh,” Enjolras said.

“Yeah,” Grantaire agreed. “Don’t make me say that again or I might throw up. Of course, I might throw up anyway, so.”

Enjolras understandably chose to ignore that last part. “So is that what people do when they’re hooking up? At some point they stop and define what exactly they want their relationship to be?”

Grantaire might have blushed; it was hard to tell from how blotchy his face was from being ill. “I guess,” he mumbled. “If you wanted. I mean, we can still just be friends with benefits, that’s fine, I guess I just…” He shifted and avoided looking up at Enjolras as he finished quietly, “I just want to know what you want from this.”

Enjolras’s hand stilled in Grantaire’s hair again, but this time Grantaire didn’t move or make a sound, instead clearly waiting for Enjolras to say something. After a long moment, Enjolras took a deep breath and said carefully, “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?”

“What, and that’s it?” Grantaire asked. “That just…is supposed to mean something? You don’t have anything else that you want to add to that?”

“What more do you want me to say?” Enjolras asked, for the first time sounding frustrated. “I show up and you say it’s something that a boyfriend would do, so I say that because I showed up here, that means something, and now you want to know what it means? I mean, what do you want from me?”

Grantaire twisted to stare up at him. “I didn’t say anything about boyfriends,” he said, voice suddenly hoarse, and not just from disposing of his stomach contents.

Enjolras frowned. “Of course you did.”

“No, I didn’t. I just said that you didn’t seem like the kind of guy to come check up on me. I never even mentioned the word ‘boyfriend’.’

“Oh.” Enjolras shrugged, blushing slightly. “Well, I guess I answered your question again there.”

Grantaire sighed. “Except, again, you really didn’t.”

Enjolras made a frustrated noise. “Of course I did! I said that I was here for a reason, I said that reason is because that’s what a boyfriend would do, so logically, I want to be your boyfriend! It’s not that difficult to understand.”

“No, it’s not,” Grantaire said, sounding slightly dazed. “I just really wanted to hear you say it.”

Enjolras stared at him for a long moment, then grinned. “Well. I said it. I want to be your boyfriend. And what about you? Defining the relationship is not just a one-way thing, you know.”

Grantaire smiled slightly. “I think that I could be down for the whole ‘boyfriends’ thing.”

“Oh, yeah?” Enjolras asked casually, leaning in, and Grantaire just smiled and stretched up to meet him…except he stopped halfway there and scrambled away from Enjolras, barely making it to the toilet in time.

Enjolras made a pitying noise and scooted closer to Grantaire, rubbing his back soothingly. “Well, at least our relationship’s getting off to a good start,” he said, and Grantaire gave him the finger without even looking at him. “Fine, well at least it can really go up from here.”

Grantaire groaned. “Don’t mention anything going or coming up, would you?”

“Sorry,” Enjolras said, though he didn’t particularly sound it. “But we’re agreed, then? We’re going to try this whole ‘boyfriends’ thing?”

Grantaire gave him a withering look. “You literally just watched me puke, and right before that, you almost kissed me right after I had puked. Either we have to date or I have to kill you. Those are our only two options.”

Enjolras looked confused for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, then obviously I take the first.” He put his arm around Grantaire’s waist and kissed his temple. “And as your boyfriend, I’m staying here until you get better.”

“Fine,” Grantaire sighed, leaning against Enjolras. “But if you catch whatever I have, there’s no way in hell I’m doing the same thing for you.”

Enjolras just laughed and kissed his temple again. “We’ll see, if the time comes.”

A few days later, as Grantaire was holding Enjolras’s hair back as he hunched over the toilet, Enjolras managed weakly, in between retching, “See? I told you so.”

And Grantaire just sighed and shook his head. “Stupid boyfriend,” he said affectionately. “You’re lucky I like you so much.”

“Yeah,” Enjolras said softly. “I am.”


End file.
